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As family historians we know that we should look at multiple sources for every fact we add to our tree. Three sources is a good rule of thumb, but “a reasonably exhaustive search” is required by the Genealogical Proof Standard.

A place of birth in the Toronto Necropolis burial register that puzzled volunteer indexer Marg Kelliher is a great example of why multiple sources are very necessary.

Birthplace of James Crawford in the Toronto Necropolis register

James Crawford, age 78, died in Toronto on July 5, 1919. Cause of death was senility. Here’s an image of his place of birth from the Necropolis register:

Digital images of Ontario death registrations for 1919 are available on Ancestry.ca so we could easily consult James Crawford’s death record to help solve the problem. Here’s an image of his place of birth:

Birthplace of James Crawford in the 1919 Ontario death register

Huh? We were still mystified.

The gravestones in the Necropolis were transcribed by OGS Toronto Branch and published in 2002. The transcription shows that James, his wife Margaret Henderson and six family members are commemorated on markers on plot L 147. James Crawford’s place of birth is carved in stone as: Enniskillen, Ireland.

Obituary for James Crawford of Toronto, in The Globe, July 8, 1919.

But is that what the burial register and death register were trying to say? Were those records providing more specific—or perhaps conflicting—information?

An obituary in The Globe on Tuesday, July 8, 1919, provides more clues to follow up but no resolution to the place of birth question.

If you can decipher (or even hazard a guess) about either bit of handwriting—or if you can add to the story of Mr. Crawford—we’d love to hear from you.

Now that summer is officially here, the Ontario Genealogical Society Toronto Branch volunteer crew will be out transcribing gravestone inscriptions on Wednesday evenings from 5:30 to 8:00 pm and Saturday mornings from 9:00 am to noon.

It is a huge job to preserve the information and make it available for researchers everywhere. We could really use your help.

As you can see from the photo, it is a collaborative process. We work in groups—to locate the plots according to the map and the notes we’ve made from plot records, to find and uncover any markers that have been overgrown with sod, and to read and write down the inscription. We frequently muster the full crew to decipher a particularly puzzling phrase or verse.

What do you need to bring? A pair of gardening gloves would be handy, but we’ll supply everything else. Come dressed for the weather, with sunscreen, hat, drinking water, and perhaps insect repellent. Sensible shoes for uneven ground are in order.

St. James, on the edge of the Don River valley is a haven for birds so you might want your camera, too.

The crew will be out just about every Saturday and Wednesday from now until the fall, weather permitting. Please contact us at info@torontofamilyhistory.org to confirm. At this point we are working in Section A p.s. (along Parliament Street), but we’ll also confirm that location when you get in touch.

St. James Cemetery is on Parliament Street just south of Bloor, and easily reached on the #65 bus which runs between Castle Frank subway station and Front Street. The #94 Wellesley bus which runs between Wellesley subway station and Castle Frank station will also work. (Either route, get off at the Wellesley and Parliament stop.) Drivers can park on cemetery roadways. There’s a map of the sections just inside the gate.

Please join us. It is a very enjoyable way to spend a few hours!

The Ontario Genealogical Society Toronto Branch crew transcribing gravestone inscriptions at St. James Cemetery in Toronto on June 18, 2011.

by Tricia Clark

One of the reasons I volunteered to index was the glimpses of people’s lives we get from the records. While indexing the records for the Toronto Trust Cemeteries project, I have been following the trends in the Cause of Death column. As I was indexing records for July 1902, one page gave me pause. Of the 52 names on that page, there were nine accidental deaths. This was an unusually high number. Even more unusual was the fact that five of these nine were young men “Killed by Falling Wall” on Thursday, July 10, 1902.

I was immediately reminded of my great-grandfather whose death certificate lists the cause of death as “Fell down shaft at Island”. Only six months after arriving in Canada in 1907 with his wife and five children, he and three other men were killed working on the excavation of a tunnel under Toronto Harbour. They fell to their deaths when a cable snapped on the “bucket” that lifted them out of the tunnels at the end of the day.

I felt compelled to find out how five young men had been killed by a falling wall. The Toronto Star for July 11, 1902 revealed that they were all firefighters killed by two separate wall collapses while fighting a fire at the P. McIntosh Feed Company on George Street.[1]

At one time, the building had been used by the Toronto Street Railway Company for stabling horses and was packed with hay, straw and other highly flammable materials. The blaze was intense and spread rapidly. Within minutes of arriving on the scene at 6:20 a.m., Chief Thompson had called a general alarm to summon other stations.

Without any warning, the first wall collapsed on Adam Kerr, David See, and W. Harry Clarke. Despite the incredible heat and danger, men worked to move the rubble to free the men. See and Clarke were found and their lifeless bodies recovered within fifteen minutes. Kerr was located a few hours later only a few feet away. A few minutes after the first wall fell, a second explosion was heard. The south wall had collapsed on Walter Collard and Fred Russell as they were preparing to move away from the dangerous area. A third man who had been with Collard and Russell was saved by the fact that he had gone to turn off the water supply for the hose. It was the largest loss of firefighters in the history of the City of Toronto fire department.

The morning following the fire, permission was granted to the Trustees of the cemetery for the civic funeral, waiving a bylaw that prohibited Sunday burials. Thousands of people waited for hours in the heat outside St. James Cathedral at King and Church and all along Yonge Street. The procession took over an hour to pass any one spot on the route to Mount Pleasant Cemetery. See, Collard and Clarke were buried in Plot B – Section 7 Lot 7, Section 8 Lot 6, and Section 8 Lot 7 respectively. Russell was buried in Plot K – Section 30, Lot 8 and Kerr was buried in Adult Single Grave 1827. These two were subsequently relocated to Plot B next to the other three in Section 6, Lot 7 and Section 16, Lot 6 respectively.[2]

Gravestones for three of the fallen firefighters (L to R: Collard, See, and Clarke) in Section B of Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto, near the Yonge Street gates.

In Their Last Alarm, Robert B. Kirkpatrick recounts the stories of Ontario firefighters who lost their lives from 1848 to 2002.[3] He provides us with some of the details of the men’s lives. David See, 32, single, was a veteran of the Boer War in South Africa.[4] Adam Kerr, 27, single, joined the department in 1900. The cemetery records indicate he was born in England. Walter Collard, 32, was the assistant captain at the Rose Avenue Hall.[5] Kirkpatrick identifies him as single but the Globe and Mail reports him married with no children.[6] The 1901 Canada census on Ancestry.ca confirms this, showing Walter, a fireman, born in 1870, living with his wife Catherine.[7] Harry Clarke, 27, was married with two children.[8] Fred Russell, 32, was married with three children. According to the Toronto Star, at the time of the fire, his wife was visiting the sanatorium in Gravenhurst, Ontario for treatment of consumption.[9]

Returning to that page in the Mount Pleasant Cemetery records with nine accidental deaths, the other four were: Oscar Joyce, 24, who died June 22, 1902 from “injuries falling from a train” in Tyndall Manitoba; Alexander Martin, 69, who died June 27, 1902 in Toronto Emergency Hospital after “injuries to head received in a fall”; Elizabeth Edwards, 17, in a drowning accident at Kew Beach on July 1, 1902; and a second drowning, William Goddard, 22 in the Don River on July 4, 1902. These are stories to be investigated another day.

“There is little doubt that out of the 180,000 people whose final resting place is here in this beautiful cemetery almost every one has a story just waiting to be told.” – Mike Filey in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, An Illustrated Guide

The author, Tricia Clark, who lives in Aurora, Ontario has been collecting family stories since she was a kid. She volunteers as an indexer for the Toronto Trust Cemeteries project as a way to give back to the genealogical community and because it’s fascinating!

Census Day in Canada is Tuesday, May 10. Canadians will receive the information brochure in the mail this week. It provides instructions from Statistics Canada about completing the census online, and how to order a paper form over the telephone if you prefer.

Regardless of the method you choose, please remember to check the “YES” box for the question that will allow your information to be released to the public in 92 years.

If you don’t check the “YES” box, Statistics Canada will consider that you have said “NO” and your information will not be available to historians and genealogists in the future. And the “picture” of Canada in 2011 will be less complete.

Make sure you (and your friends, relatives, and neighbours) make your mark in history. Check YES!

by Gwyneth Pearce

The Toronto Branch of the Ontario Genealogical Society celebrated the completion of a 20-year project in March 2011 with the publication of the transcription of grave markers at St. John’s Norway Cemetery and Crematorium.

Main gate of St. John’s Norway Cemetery, Toronto

St. John’s Norway Cemetery, also known as St. John the Baptist Norway Cemetery or St. John’s Cemetery, Berkeley, was originally established as an Anglican churchyard in 1853 on three acres of land donated by Charles Coxwell Small. (The community was known as Norway or Berkeley at various times.) The first recorded burial in the cemetery was that of William Dawes, a local farmer, who died on 19 July 1854. The cemetery was consecrated by Bishop John Strachan in July 1855. It is now inter-denominational, and its grounds have expanded over the past century and a half to cover about 35 acres of land at the northwest corner of Kingston Road and Woodbine Avenue in Toronto’s east end.

The transcription of this cemetery was a massive project that took two decades to complete and involved dozens of dedicated volunteers. The project was headed up by Branch Cemeteries Co-ordinator Jack Tyson, who obtained the necessary approvals, handled the paperwork and logistics, and organized teams of transcribers, inputters, indexers, proofreaders and editors.

The field work for the project took place at the cemetery itself. Transcribers set out week after week, typically in pairs, equipped with spray bottles of water, probes and digging tools, and went up and down the rows of tombstones, carefully recording what they found on each one. They handed over their notes to be typed up by computer inputters, and then made two more full sweeps of the cemetery to check and update the computer printouts. All the data was indexed, proofread and redacted several times. Final proofreading and editing was done by Jeannette Tyson.

The St. John’s Norway Cemetery transcription is 3454 pages in length and contains about 55,000 names in its index. It has been published on CD only, in a fully searchable PDF format. The cost is $30.00 plus $2.50 postage and handling. To order the transcription (Publication number TRN-009), visit our Cemetery Publications page.

by Janice Nelson

While transcribing the burial records for the Necropolis Cemetery, I came across an entry that intrigued me. The person buried was “Baroness Olga Heimrod”. She died 23 September 1912 of apoplexy. It’s not everyday that a Baroness dies in Toronto. A little curiosity led me to find out more about the Baroness and her husband Baron Ernest von Heimrod.

From a search of Ancestry.ca, I was able to find census records from 1881 and 1901 as well as registrations of both of their deaths. These records show that Olga was born on 3 Oct 1839 in Germany (Prussia—according to the tombstone inscription). Her father is listed as Enrich Crome and her mother is listed as Johanne K.E.D. Schiche.

Olga’s husband is listed as Ernest and he was born 26 Feb 1833 in Germany. In Germany, Ernest’s name was Ernst. With just a little digging, I found that he was part of the Hesse-Kassell noble family. According to these documents, his full name was Ernst Baron von Heimrod. His lineage can be found on The Peerage website. Ernest was the illegitimate great-grandson of William I, Elector of Hesse (German: Wilhelm I., Kurfürst von Hessen; 3 June 1743 – 27 February 1821). William I was the eldest surviving son of Frederick II, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel) and Princess Mary of Great Britain, the daughter of George II.

On the Peerage website, Olga’s maiden name is listed as Cornel. Unfortunately, I could not find any additional information about Olga’s heritage with either of the surnames.

According to the 1901 census, both Olga and Ernest immigrated in 1871. Was there significance to their immigration coming in the year of the formation of Germany under Bismark? There is some general information about German immigration in A History of German Emigration to Canada, 1850 – 1939 by Jonathan Wagner, but nothing specific.

In 1881, Olga and Ernest were living in East Toronto in the St. Thomas Ward and Ernest’s profession is listed as “restaurateur”. In 1883, according to theRegister of Dominion Annual Register and Review, Ernest was appointed “Consul for the German Empire for Ontario with the exception of the Counties under the Jurisdiction of the Consulate at Montreal”. Ernest held this position until 1888. In his obituary in the Toronto Star (June 20, 1910), it is mentioned that Ernest was quite wealthy when he immigrated to Toronto but lost almost everything in a real estate crash in 1888. At one time he owned property near the Humber River that was sold for $40,000—quite a sum for the times.

In 1901, Olga and Ernest were living in the Toronto Junction area (now part of Toronto) on a small piece of land that they retained. Ernest’s occupation is listed as an “agent”. AccordingMight’s Greater Toronto City Directory of 1903, Ernest was living at 134 Cawthra Avenue and his occupation is also listed as an agent. Given all the train activity in the area, I would guess that Ernest’s job had something to do with that. Information about The Junction can be found at The West Toronto Junction Historical Society.

In 1910, Ernest passed away on June 18 from Bright’s Disease which he suffered from for several years. His full name was listed as Ernest Freiherr Heimrod. Two years later, Olga died. At the time of her death, she was living in the Aged Women’s Home. There is a listing for Aged Women’s Home at 47 Belmont Street in the 1912 City of Toronto Directory (This is a precursor to the present-day Belmont House). The Aged Women’s Home was set up to prevent elderly women from being homeless so it appears that Olga’s fortunes continued to decline after Ernest’s death.

Ernest and Olga do not appear to have had any surviving children. In her will (written 24 October 1911, and probated 22 November 1912), Olga named the German Society of Toronto as executor. The Society renounced administration to the Trusts & Guarantee Co. Olga left her total estate, $417.50 cash and $50 in “household goods and furniture”, to the four children of her “late sister Elise Marie Crome, widow of the late Dr. Eltze, of the City of Charlottenburg, in the Kingdom of Prussia”[1]. The German Society of Toronto or “Deutsche Geselleschaff” was named as the owner of Olga’s grave in the Necropolis burial record. The “Deutsche Geselleschaff” was a benevolence society for Germans living in Canada that ensured that members received an honourable burial.

The modest flat grave marker for Olga and Ernest (Section A, Range 1, Plot 17[2]) adds that the Baron was born in Anhalt-Dessau, and that “Olga Crome Baroness Von Heimrod” was born in Prussia.

Janice Nelson, who lives in Calgary, is a member of the Alberta Family History Society and a volunteer indexer for the Toronto Trust Cemeteries Project. If you can add to the story of the Baroness, or if you would like join the indexing project, please contact us at: fsi@torontofamilyhistory.org.

Our diligent crew of indexers are finishing off the registers of the Toronto Necropolis and moving on to the Mount Pleasant Cemetery. We’ll be seeing digital images from a microfilm that covers 1903 to 1933. (We did the earlier years at the beginning of the project.)

For those readers not familiar with the project, our partners at FamilySearch Indexing make the images and the indexing software available online. We do the indexing on our own home computers and the data is uploaded to FamilySearch. When the project is complete, the index and the images will be available online and free of charge. We have indexers all across Canada as well as in England and the US. All you need is a high-speed Internet connection. Read more about the Toronto Trust Cemeteries project.

Together, we have indexed more than 25,000 names in the first months of 2011.

The new Mount Pleasant registers look very much like the Necropolis registers we’ve been working on for the last couple of months. You could hide the “Nearest Relation” fields for now, but you will need them again in a few weeks. Here are instructions.

You’ll also find some history about Mount Pleasant on the blog. It is a very beautiful place, full of magnificent old trees and rare species. As the weather improves, I’ll be sure to post some photos.

by Jane E. MacNamara

In the last couple of weeks, indexing volunteers working on the records of the Toronto Necropolis have come across the re-burial in 1911 of remains from a nearly forgotten downtown Toronto cemetery.

The small cemetery was located on the north side of Duchess Street (now called Richmond Street East) roughly bounded on the east by Stonecutter’s Lane, and on the north by Britain Street. The west boundary was a third of the way to George Street, at about today’s 260 Richmond Street East. It was about a half acre in size. The boundaries of the graveyard were reportedly somewhat undefined as bodies were unearthed when both Caroline (now Sherbourne) and Britain streets were built.

The property lay directly south of William Allan’s 100-acre Park Lot 5. The Park Lot started at Queen Street and ran north all the way to Bloor Street. Allan also owned an extension of his Park Lot south of Queen Street known as the “meadow” which included the lot on Sherbourne east of Stonecutter’s Lane. The meadow had a stream running through it. The angled path of today’s Britain Street echoes the path of the stream, and seems to be the dividing line between the burial ground and Allan’s meadow. You can read more about William Allan and his family in our Simcoe’s Gentry project.

Detail of Town of York patent plan showing the lots on Duchess Street between George Street and Caroline (later Sherbourne) Street. The burial ground was just above the double “ss” of Duchess. (Archives of Ontario RG 1-100 Patent Plans)

The 1834 directory of the Town of York[1] tells us that the cemetery belonged to “the Presbyterian Church in Hospital-street, Rev. Mr. Harris, Minister”. (Hospital Street is now part of Richmond Street.) Rev. James Harris was the son-in-law of prominent Torontonian Jesse Ketchum who donated land at Yonge and Richmond streets in 1821 to build a church for the Presbyterian congregation of York. Harris was the first minister, staying until about 1844.[2] The church was named Knox in July 1844 after the Disruption within the Church of Scotland.

But the Duchess Street burial ground dates back to long before 1834—and was not always Presbyterian.

A petition to the Executive Council of Upper Canada in 1824[3] from three trustees, Colin Drummond, Jesse Ketchum, and John Ross, representing the Presbyterian Congregation of York sheds considerable light on the subject. On September 14, 1824, the trustees requested that the “Gore between Lots Number Four and Five on the North side of Duchess Street containing about half an acre of land” be granted to them. They stated that the land had been used as a burying ground “upwards of twenty years” and that the Presbyterians had been burying their dead there for the latter part of that period. The trustees had investigated and found out that the property was not owned by anyone and therefore grantable. They wished to enclose and secure it and continue to use it as a burying ground.

A report from the Surveyor General’s Office[4] supporting the petition summarizes correspondence from February and March 1797, which orders that four acres be set aside for burials “including the present burial ground”. It is not clear whether “the present burial ground” was on Duchess Street or on the land set aside for the Anglican congregation at King and Church streets (where the Cathedral Church of St. James is today.)

So the burial ground on Duchess Street dates back at least 214 years, and perhaps a little longer!

A second document supporting the 1824 petition states that York’s Anglican minister acknowledged that the Duchess Street burial ground had earlier been used for “general interments” but was “by common assent of the Inhabitants allotted to the Presbyterian Church”[5]. An Order in Council on December 1, 1824, granted the land to the Presbyterians, and the transfer was completed in March 1825 when the survey fees were paid.[6]

The adjacent Lot 5 on Duchess Street was sold by Alexander Macdonell to William Jarvis in 1807 and recorded June 26, 1817. A copy of the legal description and a sketch of the property are pasted into the Knox Church minute book[7] and dated March 3, 1849. The documents show that the burial ground had mistakenly enclosed a strip of Lot 5 within the fence. This strip of land came into question again in 1858 and 1859, when a grandson of William Jarvis, George Murray Jarvis, tried to reclaim the 26-foot-wide strip and sell it to the trustees.[8] Legal opinions recorded in Knox’s minutes said that George Jarvis was out of luck. The fence had been up and the burial ground used without objection for much too long, and the most recent date on a tombstone, within the strip in question, was 1841.

Sketch of lots 5 and 4 on the north side of Duchess Street and the gore between the lots that was the burial ground. The encroachment by the cemetery on Lot 5 is shown with a dotted line. (Congregational minutes of Knox Church, page 105, March 3, 1849, Archives of Ontario, microfilm GS 6334)

An 1868 article in the Globe[9], describes the burial ground as “a romantic little nook” with “about a dozen moss-grown stones”. “A solitary cow crops the grass which covers the still visible mounds”. It claims that no burials had taken place for 20 years and many bodies had been moved to other cemeteries. Apparently the map of the cemetery had “got all into confusion” so that families who wished to move loved ones could no longer do so.

A 1904 article in Landmarks of Toronto,[10] claims that the burial ground was used until the establishment of the Necropolis in 1850, but the Globe article mentioned previously would indicate that burials in the later period were likely few and far between. The 1904 article states that the grave markers were buried, the ground leveled, and from the mid 1830s, part of the land used for a carpenter’s shop and cottages.

In about 1886, the Duchess Street Presbyterian Mission Chapel (associated with Knox Church) was built on the property, and according to Landmarks, when a cavity was dug to accommodate a furnace, a quantity of human bones were found and carefully reburied.[11]

In mid-March 1911, articles from the Toronto Star[12] give us a graphic report of gravestones and 19 bodies found during excavations around the “old Duchess Street Mission”. One large gravestone unearthed apparently bore the inscription: “Sacred to the memory of Eggleson McDonald who misfortunately was drowned July 12, 1835, age 24.” The articles also describe the nearly indecipherable coffin plates that were mainly painted rather than engraved. Only one name from a coffin plate, “Powell”, is mentioned, with the date “May 1, 1828.” The reporter notes that a stone used as a step into the Mission building was “sacred to the memory of someone whose first name was Duncan”. He also notes that all the bones were to be reburied at the Necropolis.

The Toronto Necropolis register shows “59 remains removed from the Duchess St. Presbyterian Church Burying Ground” reburied on April 6, 1911, in Plot L 106. The plot owner is the “Moderator Knox Church Sessions”. There are also two re-interments with names: Anne Drummond Kennedy, age 10 who died 12 March 1834, and Duncan Kennedy, age 45 who died 31 March 1834.[13]

An entry on July 21, 1911, shows the burial of another “19 unknown remains from Duchess St. Presbyterian Cemetery” in plot L 106.[14] On December 21, 1911, another 75 remains were buried; on June 5, 1912,[15] 64 remains; and a single burial on October 25, 1912[16]—all in the same plot.

The removal of remains from the Duchess Street burial ground was apparently done to allow the sale of the property. Our Places of Worship Committee’s files show that part of the proceeds of the sale in April 1911 was distributed among four churches—Dufferin Street, Riverdale, Rhodes, and South Side.

Unfortunately, no burial register for the Duchess Street Presbyterian Burial Ground seems to have survived. A fire that destroyed Knox Church in 1847 may explain this, but the map described in the 1868 Globe article mentioned above makes me wonder if the records were saved from the fire. The records of baptisms and marriages from Knox begin in 1823 and have been transcribed by Toronto Branch.

A plaque on Plot L 106 in the Toronto Necropolis reads as follows:

The resting place of early Presbyterian settlers
They were originally buried in the Presbyterian Burying Ground at Duchess (Richmond) and Caroline (Sherbourne) Streets, between 1818 and 1841. Due to steady expansion of the city, the cemetery was closed, and the remains of 263 persons were removed to this location in 1911 and 1912. Although few of those buried here are identified, family records indicate that several members of William Lyon Mackenzie’s family, including three of his children, are interred in this lot. Requiescat in pace.

As we continue to index the Necropolis burial registers, we’ll watch for more of the burials from the Duchess Street graveyard. If you can shed more light on this bit of Toronto’s history, please get in touch.

And as always, we’d welcome your help with our Toronto Trust Cemeteries indexing project. Please contact us at fsi@torontofamilyhistory.org.

Menu cover for the 1891 annual dinner of Trinity Medical College. The College was on Spruce Street, just a few blocks from the Toronto Necropolis.

by Jane E. MacNamara

As we work at transcribing the burial registers of the Toronto Necropolis, it is easy to get caught up in the stories of the people whose demise we are recording. A week or two ago, this entry caught my eye:

What took this young Ontario doctor to Montana? What was the Toronto connection that brought him all the way back to the Necropolis—in what seems like a remarkably short nine days? And of course, his death by accidental poisoning was really intriguing!

Tried-and-true genealogical research techniques told me to start with the known to get to the unknown—so what about other records of Henry’s death? Montana death records for 1891 are spotty. I had no easy access to Montana newspapers of the time. And I didn’t find a death notice or other account of Henry’s demise in the Toronto Globe. (I eventually located an obituary elsewhere, but more about that later.)

However, I did have at hand a transcription of the gravemarkers in the Toronto Necropolis published by OGS Toronto Branch in 2002. In plot N 64, the marker commemorates Henry Head Gray M.D., 1865–1891, as well as his father John Gray (1823–1872), mother Jane Head (1826–1904), a young Robert L. Gray (1861–1869), and Rebecca Gray (1821–1869).

Armed with this cluster of names, dates, locations and John’s occupation, I was able to locate the family in census records, through Ancestry.ca. In 1861, 37-year-old John was a “brewer” in Dundas, Ontario, but by 1871 the family had moved to Yorkville (now part of Toronto) and John was a “merchant”. Our Dr. Henry Gray seems to be the youngest of at least six children, with older siblings Caroline M. (born c1853), John H. (c1855), Eliza R. (c1857), Anna (c1859), and Jane (c1863).

By 1881, a widowed Jane Gray can be found living with her six adult and teen children, the youngest Henry at 16. Older brother John H., age 25, was now a merchant, perhaps looking after the family business.

By 1891, a 65-year-old Jane Gray is still living with three of her daughters: Caroline is a public school teacher, and intriguingly, Eliza and Jane are both medical students. Our Henry, of course, has gone to Montana, died, and been brought back to Toronto for burial just about two weeks before the census. Or was he?

City directories for Toronto fill in more details. These are available online as part of the Toronto Public Library’s digital collections. John Gray’s business was Gray Brothers, located on the west side of Yonge Street in Yorkville in 1870. In 1889, before Henry set off for Montana, the family lived at 259 Wellesley Street (at Rose Avenue). Eliza was a teacher at Park School, and Jane “Miss Jennie” taught at Bolton Street School. Our young “Harry” was a student.

What took the newly minted doctor, Henry Head Gray, to Hamilton, Montana?

The Montana Territory had only just become a state in 1889, and Hamilton was even younger, established in 1890 by copper mine owner Marcus Daly as a company town for his lumber mill. Did Daly advertise for a doctor for his workers?

Certainly Montana was very much in the news in Toronto. In the months before Henry’s departure, the Globe carried reports of new railway lines into Montana from western Canada. There were ads for special flat-fare excursions from Chicago on the “Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe” which included Montana on the list of exciting western states and territories. And Toronto’s Exhibition of 1890 was to include a Wild West Show with “fiery mustangs from Montana”.

But the “curious” part of this story is not why and how Henry died in Montana in 1891. The mystery is whether he died in 1891.

Here is the obituary I mentioned earlier—from 1914:

Henry Head Gray, MD. Trinity Medical College, Toronto, 1890; of Oklahoma City; was found dead in his room in the Blossom House, Kansas City, March 10, from the effects of poison, self administered, it is believed, with suicidal intent, aged 46. (Journal of the American Medical Association, March 28, 1914, page 1032.

This Henry Head Gray died almost 23 years later than our Henry, but also in March. The age 46 in the obit puts his birth year at about 1868, within two or three years of the 1865 recorded on our Henry’s gravestone.

Both men (if there were two) went to medical school in Toronto and graduated at about the same time. And both were poisoned…

Did someone take the diploma from the wall of Henry’s office in Hamilton when his body was shipped back to Toronto and assume his identity? Did the real Henry live on—out of contact with his Toronto family? In that case, who is really buried in plot N 64?

Last weekend, I came across an interesting fellow in the records of the Toronto Necropolis. Let’s just call him “John” for now. The Necropolis register showed John, aged 39, drowned on April 24, 1855, and was buried the next day. He was born in England. The plot was owned by Jane, presumably John’s wife.

John’s surname was Treiblecock. Unusual, and as you can see in the image below, someone had taken pains to see that it was corrected from an earlier version.

John Treiblecock's name in the register of the Toronto Necropolis

Indexers working on both the York General Burying Ground and the Necropolis have seen many other variants of the surname—even as two words.

The Globe of Wednesday April 25, 1855 (page 2, column 7) supplied a few more details about John:

Coroner Duggan held an inquest yesterday forenoon on the body of a man named John Trebilcock, who was drowned a few hours previously in the river Don. It appears that a little girl fell into the stream and was being carried away by the current when the deceased ran to rescue her but his feet slipped off a log and he fell in and drowned. The child was saved by a person residing near the place. The deceased kept tavern for some time not far from the scene of the melancholy occurrence.

The census taken in January of 1852 shows John Treblecock, innkeeper, age 36, with his 23-year-old wife Jane, and children M-Jane (age 4), Elizabeth (2) and Joseph (1). John ran the tavern in a 2-storey brick house. (York Township, east of Yonge Street, District 42, Subdistrict 402, Division 2, pages 324 and 325).

So who made sure John’s name was recorded as “Treiblecock” in the Necropolis register? Was it his young widow with three small children trying to stay in control of one small aspect of her suddenly chaotic life?

I like to think so.

By the 1861 census, widow Jane Treiblecock had married David Mathers, tavern keeper, of Todmorden and two more children had been added to the household.

John Treiblecock is commemorated on the red granite Mathers obelisk (Lot D 201S) opposite the main gate of the Toronto Necropolis. The monument is much more recent than 1855—and unfortunately (in my opinion) records John’s surname as Trebilcock.

Toronto Necropolis register image is part of an ongoing FamilySearch Indexing project to index the records of the Toronto Trust Cemeteries. When the index is complete, researchers will have access to these digital images so they can consider the “original scribble.” Indexing is done online. You can help.